Sunday, May 14, 2017

Beginning a conversation with someone
new may be a daunting proposition because of cultural norms and expectations. The
way one addresses, places the subject appropriately in the middle and concludes
with salutation are respected. In modern
World [SMS language] one may get carried away by the mindless [or mind
boggling] abbreviations and short forms.
I belong to a generation whence joining a Typewriting institution was
the norm, learning shorthand was considered a higher standard and mastery in
stenography, gave a genius status ! ~ the days when formal English flowed in
business letters and demi-official memos, dictated and transcribed manfully on
typewriter keyboards [which had no del / correct facility] – a single wrong
typeface would remain ungainly and there was this breed of Specialists, who
typed out volumes of letters and statements where the account figures would
match between different sheets .. .. .. ……..

Away from all this, a well-drafted letter [or e-mail communiqué] should start with an appropriate salutation, the
precisely written subject line, the detailed clear subject matter, conclusion with the name, designation and
Organisation signature of the Sender. Imperatively,
it has to have the right people or group who are expected to respond on the ‘To’
field and those who are required to be kept informed by the mail in the ‘CC’
field and less talked about the ‘bcc’ field.

Thus invariably, all communications should start with – Dear Sir. When addressing a Woman colleague, it
generally Madam and if it is fellow employee or Junior, it could be a bit
complicated – whether Mrs or Ms, and now a days Ms is taken to be common. However, special care is to be taken when it
comes to addressing some specific posts like
the
Governor, a High Court Judge or one
which specifies a 'protocol' that is meant
to be adhered to. – but, if one were to
write to a group or people without being sure whether the addressee is a Man or
Woman – whether it should be – ‘Dear Sirs' or 'Dear Sir or Madam' could be the
Q that one comes across ?

Generally, in a
formal writing, beginning with Dear
Sir(s) or Dear Sir or Madam are equally acceptable, but make sure you match
these with Yours faithfully at the end. Yours sincerely is used in less formal
letters when the name of your correspondent is known, thus: Dear Vijay or Dear Mr Dhoni would end with Yours sincerely. If you know
your correspondent very well, you might begin with Dear Ashwin and end with either Yours or Best wishes.

Sometime back, one
of Britain’s most prestigious law firms banned the use of “Dear Sirs” from all of its
legal documents and communications, apparently the first of the “magic circle”
of top City legal companies to do so.

Freshfields
Bruckhaus Deringer stopped using the
phrase and directed that all communications
to be “Dear Sir or Madam”, while in the
US all correspondence were to start with
“Dear Ladies and Gentlemen”. Equivalents in Cantonese, Mandarin and European
languages were also agreed across Freshfields’ global network. The firm
implemented the change after one of its London associates researched legal
documents from the last 10 initial public offerings of private company shares.
It found 81 law firms and banks exclusively used “Dear Sirs” on letters and
communications during the process. Freshfields’ joint managing partner Chris
Pugh said: “It’s a relatively small change, but it’s a significant point and
you notice that when everyone immediately accepts that the change needs to
happen.”“I hope it will shed light on other things that we might inadvertently
be doing that risk alienating people we communicate with - not only people at
Freshfields but clients and other professionals as well.”

A Chief Executive
of one of the UK’s largest charity for
women’s rights, said the change was long overdue. “It’s to be welcomed, but it
is pretty basic stuff which we should all be doing really. I still get referred
to as ‘Mr Sam Smethers’ by the media, despite being the chief executive of a
women’s charity. We have to think about the language we use as it reveals the
assumptions and decisions being made. Even parliament continues to use ‘he’ in
legislation, the assumption being that that will refer to everyone. We should
be looking at gender neutral language for our legislation too.”

Law firm Withers
said the male address was “accepted standard”. A spokesman said: “It very much
depends on who we’re writing to. If they are an individual then it depends on
their gender and title. If it’s an organisation, then we currently use ‘Dear
Sirs’ as that remains the accepted standard. There is currently no formal plan
to change this, but it is an area we’re happy to explore.”

However, this only
answers the Q, when the Q is how to address someone when the addressee is not
known – otherwise ‘Dear Sirs’ appears to be perfectly in order to me. To me, it appears right to address a Woman
as ‘Madam’ or when Dear Mrs … ..
(somehow, I am not too comfortable in Dear Madam – for it appears to be
a fusion of knowing one and being formal)

Before concluding
another leading website lead to me to an article which reads :

Here’s a startling
revelation – you could remove that kind of meaningless salutation entirely and
not change a single thing in the actual meaning of the letter. Now if you were
using a personal salutation like “Dear Bob” or “Dear Mrs Smith” then that might
be different – but many firms now use an Attention: Person approach to this in
the address block itself, which makes lots of sense.

So while the magic
circle catches up with 2006 in its strive towards gender neutral salutations,
the rest of us should be considering just abolishing them entirely. Next, in
changing the language how they have they have actually changed the meaning.

The reason “Dear
Sirs” exists is because, traditionally, you were writing to the firm rather
than to the individual. That’s why it was plural, and it’s also why you started
marking things to people’s attention, rather than actually directing the letter
to them. However, “Dear Sir or Madam”
does not achieve that goal – you’re now clearly writing to the individual
involved rather than the firm, since you’re using the singular of each. That begs
the question: if you’re writing to an individual, you probably know who that
is. So why now actually address them?

Views, contrasting
views, confusion and more ~ and that takes back to writing what you generally are
comfortable, the formal way !